Measha Brueggergosman, the Diva Next Door

The Canadian soprano's Kennedy Center recital radiated warmth and melted hearts. (Peter Smith)

Measha Brueggergosman's Sunday afternoon recital at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater was not only a delight in and of itself but also gave promise of much more to come.

The soprano, still in her mid-twenties, sings with an all-encompassing warmth and joy, melding honed artistry with youthful enthusiasm. She seemed genuinely surprised to find a capacity house awaiting her. "This is my first time at the Kennedy Center," she announced with an explosive laugh toward the end of her program. "I'm freaking out!" No doubt many an anxious debutante has felt the same way, but Brueggergosman's happy, candid admission served only to endear her further.

Brueggergosman was born and raised in New Brunswick, which is, after Quebec, the most heavily French-speaking province of Canada. Perhaps this is one reason why her accent, in Ravel's "Cinq Melodies Populaires Grecques," sounded so fluent and natural: The very phonics were musical. She has a capacious voice -- dark, rich and lustrous -- and is capable of a sound that that would have filled the Kennedy Center Concert Hall almost as easily as it did the much-smaller Terrace. And yet she is equally capable of singing softly, with a delicate intimacy -- her artistry has size to spare, but no unwanted gigantism.

Not everything was successful. Certain high notes, sung loudly, took on an intense, rapid vibrato that called to mind the antiquated electronic instrument known as the theremin (think "Good Vibrations" or the soundtrack to "The Day the Earth Stood Still"). And I'm not sure that I'd want to hear her yet in the most complicated and elliptical songs of Richard Strauss or Hugo Wolf: Right now she is at her best in direct and emotionally straightforward material, of which there was no shortage on Sunday. Let's let her be young for a while.

The late Cuban composer Xavier Montsalvatge's set of "Cinco Canciones Negras" was perhaps the highlight of the afternoon. If you can imagine the French composer Francis Poulenc swapping his Gallic tidiness for raw, bluesy Spanish torch songs, all the while losing none of his patrician elegance, you have some idea of what these marvelous pieces sound like. They seemed made for Brueggergosman: She shouted "Yes!" at the end of "Cuba Dentro de un Piano" as if her ball team had just hit a grand slam in the ninth inning and sang "Cancion de Cuna par Dormir a un Negrito" ("Lullaby for a Black Baby") with enough strength and pathos to comfort the world.

"On This Island," a song cycle by Benjamin Britten with words by W.H. Auden, finds both creators at their best. I was particularly taken by "Let the florid music praise!," which sounds like a Handel aria trying desperately to break through Britten's cool, clipped modernism. Brueggergosman selected four of Aaron Copland's "Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson" and sang them with that pared-down, essentialist Copland simplicity that is not at all simple. A set of cabaret songs by William Bolcom allowed her to show off her fine, effusive sense of humor: "Song of Black Max" is pseudo Brecht/Weill of unusual potent quality, while "Waitin' " was shot through with quiet, urgent anticipation -- assuaged, eventually, by quietude, and then a beaming smile and rapt ovation.

Brueggergosman was accompanied by the vigorous and musical pianist J. J. Penna; the concert was presented by the Vocal Arts Society.